Questions and answers about English usage

Capitalizing proper nouns...or not?

Josh wrote to me today:

I work for Redbox, a new dvd company. Everywhere you see Redbox written from the company itself, it is written with a lower case “r.” Examples are plentiful on our website, redbox.com. I guess it’s sort of a creative, modern way of writing it.

However, I was under the impression that, when writing a name of a company, it is always capitalized when used in documents, emails, essays, or other official forms. (I guess my question would be specifically in reference to company-wide emails that need to be professional and grammatically sound.) Even while I was writing this email to you, I was auto-corrected when I wrote the lower case “r” in Redbox.

I have asked around and no one seems to know. Should the “r” be capitalized in Redbox or not?

Good question! Normally, we do capitalize proper nouns, including Josh and Crawford and Microsoft. However, we call ourselves anything we like, and capitalize it as we prefer. Auto-corrections assume we want capitalization, but that's not always the case.

Consider the iPad and the iMac, or e.e. cummings; Canada also has a famous poet who goes by bill bissett. I see dozens of websites with lowercase titles. If redbox wants to be lowercase, long may it prosper ... even if it is, um, undercapitalized.

Comments

You've still not answered what is proper whether to capitalize or not. Besides Redbox other companies such as AT&T use lower case at&t on all their signage but whenever people write about the company it's always AT&T.